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 Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 5:00 pm
Kerberos was not in what would consider a fit state to be out. As a magical planetary warrior, he really should not be out patrolling while he was drunk, but he was - if sitting on a bench with a bottle of vodka while powered up instead of powered down could be considered patrolling. He had plopped himself on a bench towards the outer edge of the park and set himself up comfortably, because for some reason people were a lot less likely to bother him about being drunk in public when he had holes in his chest and forehead and generally looked, well, inhuman.
He could feel a Page aura nearby, and he let out a tiny groan. With any luck it would be someone who was content to leave him be, because he was pretty sure he was in exactly zero condition to fight.
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 5:42 pm
Abject doubt toward her own mental stability slowly gave way to uneasy acceptance of her current condition as a 'warrior of the Cosmos'. Annaliese herself never truly lent the phrase much credit, nor could she be certain that she would take Quenton's advice to heart and suspend her rigorously trained scientific thought process. Perhaps it would've been her fairytale dreams come true as a young girl, but Annaliese hardly qualified as such now. If anything, she felt as though she donned someone's flamboyant mermaid dress for cocktail parties, or a costume tailored for a Christmas pageant angel when she donned the garb of Stara Maslina.
It still felt awkward. It still felt untrue. She supposed, then, that it might always feel that way.
Powering up, though, drew more of Stara's attention to her boots than the absolutely preposterous existence of a guidance counselor moonlighting as a superhero. In combination with her equally impossible dress, Stara spent far more time concentrating on how to walk properly without tripping over her own gown than she did toward what she should be doing, or looking out for.
Like other Knights.
Like threats.
Like people in need.
Maybe it was a twist of fate, she supposed, when the relatively short endeavors of learning to walk in complicated attire led to the ambience lighting surrounding a bench on the edge of a park. Stara herself wasn't far away; maybe another thirty paces and she'll have happened upon the young man that now slumped over, inert. She wondered who he might be, though the dreadful feeling assaulting her from his direction gave pause to her initial approach. Pushing the thoughts aside, Stara forced herself in his direction if only to garner more information about this dubious second life.
"Hello," she started as she jingled her way down the sidewalk to confront the blue-haired man. "Is this seat taken?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 6:18 pm
Kerberos was watching as she approached, and he couldn't help but grin a little. Uniform struggles were infinitely familiar to him - his first stage had been far less mobile than his second, and even now he had to watch his step or risk slicing a foot open. More to the point, she looked like the opposite of a threat, and so he scooted over just a bit to give her bench space.
"No, definitely not," he said, and he swirled the bottle a little. "Want a drink?" He offered, because it certainly couldn't hurt. He might as well at least attempt to be friendly.
He was pretty sure she was a Cosmos Knight, anyway, and his experience so far with Cosmos was "Hvergelmir" and Hvergelmir was pretty decent. For a Knight. "It's straight vodka, which might not be to your tastes."
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 6:34 pm
Stara took the offered seat as gracefully as she could manage. It wasn't much, ultimately, but afterward she smoothed out the rumples in her dress until she was satisfied.
"Oh, no, no thank you," she refused politely, waving away the drink. "I got a little carried away in my college years, and got a little crazy with the stuff. I swore it off when I almost lost my shot at my Master's." Maybe it was a little careless to give away so much information about herself, but she so long ago learned that much should be given to receive in equal parts - no one opens up on such a great leap of faith when it's avoidable.
But did she want the boy to open up?
He looked rather depressed, for what she could discern of his body language. Slumped posture, bleary eyes, the choice of solitude over interacting with others... And considering alcohol's potency as a depressant, she wagered that he must've taken a particularly difficult hit to resort to such behaviors. "I'm Stara Maslina, or so I am told. May I ask your name? It's a pretty cold and lonely night to be drinking, you know. Would you like some company?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 6:58 pm
Kerberos shrugged, and took a drink for himself before setting the bottle on the ground, carefully leaned against the bench leg. No reason to waste the drink just because she didn't want any. "Your loss," he said, "not that that's not a good reason." If he got past this, which he wasn't entirely sure he was going to because being drunk and powered was probably an invitation to get killed, or he would get executed because he was really, really thinking about the purification thing, he would probably never want a drink again.
He pushed his hair away from his face, a thousand percent more of a challenge when he was powered and there was a ridiculous amount more of it.
"Kerberos. And I'm not gonna say no to company." Unless someone decided to break up their little chat because surely a Corrupt Super and a Page could not just be having a conversation, there had to be a fight going on. "How long have you been, you know, a sparkly wonder for?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 7:13 pm
Stara laughed lightly. "I think that's a loss I can afford to take." She leaned back as he did, quietly folding her hands in her lap. Her gaze meandered to them as she listened. He didn't have a lot to say, not in words exactly, but his body language and inflections hosted their own hints toward despair. Something was eating at this boy, much like many of her other clients, and it was her duty as a guidance counselor to help troubled souls find their paths. But for someone adorned in holes and cracks, and such a foreboding ambience around his presence, what did that mean toward her obligations?
What did it mean when she debuted as Stara Maslina?
Maybe it wasn't her requirement to assist the boy, but if conversation drifted in that direction, it wasn't her place to thwart it. "Oh, I haven't been dressed like this for long. I'm still getting my feet wet with all this talk about... Magical Knights, and Wonders, and a war that, frankly, I have found no concrete evidence of it existing. It's kind of embarrassing to be faced with this, really. Up until recently, I thought I might've finally lost my mind. Maybe that thought isn't entirely gone, but..." Stara tried to laugh. "You have to admit, we look a little out of the ordinary."
Finally Stara cast her gaze back toward the boy, taking in the way he fought so furiously against his bangs. He looked worse than sad. Despaired, or just lost. "I haven't met anyone with those, um..." Carefully she reached forward to gesture at the cracks in his head and heart. "Are they holes? What can you tell me about that?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 7:32 pm
"Man, I wouldn't have believed it except the way I got my fancy outfit was having somebody stick a hand in my chest. There was also a talking cat. It was...weird." 'Weird' was a good way to sum it up, while also cleverly avoiding talking about what had brought him into those circumstances. "And like, I've seen myself a couple times -- would you believe my hair is normally about this long?" He gestured to about his chest, the approximate length of his civilian hair, give or take a few inches that mattered a lot less when he wasn't sober.
He let out a hefty exhale when she asked about the holes. "They sort of just. Happened, like the hair. They don't hurt or anything, and I'm pretty sure you can't reach inside," as if that was any reassurance. "One of the other Corrupts said it was because Chaos acts weird with our starseeds, or something. Corruption is unnatural and so it does...weird things to us." Words were hard.
"What about you? How'd you end up like this?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 11:05 pm
Stara smiled softly. It felt surreal to listen to someone recount their own equally improbable introduction to the magical world - a hand thrust through bone, what would normally kill a man, yet it made him stronger. Another wonder of this strange universe was his mention of a talking cat, which sounded more like something out of a fanciful Disney story. She found no want or interest to judge him for what he related to her - whether entirely truthful or not, she couldn't guess - but instead she offered a solemn nod to confirm her interest in his stories.
"It's funny that you mention it, actually. Chaos, I mean." Stara formed a steeple with her two index fingers directly in front of her lips - a habit she often retained when trying to relate facts to one another, or explain a psychological concept to one of her patients. "I once met with a Page named Avalon who told me a bit of a story about Chaos. She said that all people who, for lack of a better term, are infected with Chaos are just that - sick people. She seemed to think that Chaos convinces people to do bad because it's the only way they can feel good. And I suppose, to equate it to your current standing, is a lot like drinking away your problems." She smiled again, but the way her lips curled hinted of something other than sincerity.
"I don't know how true all of it is. It could be that Avalon is mistaken, or sick herself and projecting her symptoms onto Chaos, or any number of things." Her gaze focused on a lamp across the street, where moths ceaselessly battered the translucent glass. "What do you think, Kerberos? Are you sick with Chaos?"
She let the question linger in the air before continuing, offering Kerberos a reprieve if one was so desired.
"When I first became a Knight, it was..." She tried to suppress a giggle. "Fantastical, to say the least. It was one of those days where nothing seemed to be going right. I remember I was trying to walk to a coffee shop on my lunch break, and they were doing construction on the street to the extent that they had to close the sidewalk. There was a worker there who directed me toward the detour and, I don't know why it struck me so keenly, but he had the saddest eyes. Come to think of it, they remind me a little of yours.
"So, I went down the alley he suggested, but there was something in it. This... Monster, I think. I can't really describe it well, but it looked like... Maybe an overlarge centipede with human legs. I thought at first that I must be going insane - people just don't see these types of things in everyday life - but it became very real when the creature tried to kill me. The rest of it is something of a blur, but I remember hearing a name - Stara Maslina. And it seemed like the next moment, the monster was nothing but a pile of dust.
"Funny story, isn't it? One day your life is normal, and the next, you're living a fairytale."
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 11:28 pm
The name was like a knee to the gut. Avalon Page. Kerberos visibly flinched, and stared at his lap, curling his fingers into his fuku. "Avalon was my mentor, once," he said, a little distantly, and then he glanced back over to her.
"Sick with Chaos? She'd know, she's been there and back again." It didn't feel like an illness. It felt, sometimes, like a whisper, like a lowering of his inhibitions, like an urge to chase his darkest desires and do every terrible thing he had ever wanted to but had never been able to. And if there was anyone he trusted, even when the words were relayed by a third party, to know what Chaos did, it was Avalon. A disease was exactly what it was, an infection, but it was, as far as he was concerned, incurable. He could mute the symptoms, but he would never be able to cure the underlying problem, because he was too afraid to go through with it.
Her description of her Awakening was a lot less fun than his, and he cringed a little in sympathy. "So basically the worst day possible, then?" He said, and for a moment he considered clumsily fumbling for another swig of the bottle, but not when he was talking, really.
"I lost normal a couple of months before I got corrupted, though. Long story short, my sister got caught in this mess and murdered." Which was incredibly reductionist. "So I guess I had the one-day-normal, ******** thing but, y'know, it took longer before I figured out how sincerely ******** my life was."
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